The number and variety of televisions channels today is tremendous. Viewers of cable, satellite, and other television subscription services can often choose from among many dozens and even hundreds of channels. It is therefore possible that a viewer is choosing which programs to watch from among thousands of available programs during any given week. The variety of channel options and the number of programs that are provided each week is so immense that television subscribers greatly benefit from using an electronic program guide (EPG).
An EPG can indicate, among other things, what programs are on which channels at any given time throughout a week. An EPG can thus have information about thousands of television programs that are scheduled and available for viewing during each week. The number of available programs also continues to increase. Consequently, the data size of an EPG is large and growing larger. It can be difficult to transmit the EPG to cable and satellite set-top boxes, as well as to store it at the set-top boxes, because of the large amount of data in the EPG.